The National Human Rights Commission held its first regional review meeting for the Eastern Region on 5th June at the Ranchi Institute of Neuro-Psychiatry and Allied Sciences (RINPAS), Knake, Ranchi, Jharkhand. The meeting was organized as a part of the five regional review meetings to be held on mental health during 2009-2010 to ascertain the status of compliance with NHRC's recommendations on quality assurance in mental health and to review the steps proposed to be taken by the States. Representatives of the States of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Orissa were invited to the meeting, which was inaugurated by Mr. P.C. Sharma, Member, NHRC. Addressing the gathering, Mr. Sharma said that the health care system in the country in general and mental health care in particular suffered from a number of serious deficiencies. For a country of over one billion, there were only about 37 to 40 mental hospitals in the government sector which were not enough. The capacity of existing hospitals needed to be enhanced with an adequate number of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychiatric nurses having orientation to shift from custodial care to therapeutic care approach for patients in mental hospitals and they must be equipped with sufficient medicines. Underlining the disintegration of joint family norms as one of the reasons among others for increasing stress, Mr. Sharma said that morbidity on account of mental illness would overtake cardiovascular diseases as the single largest risk in India by 2020. In this context he said that each hospital and the State government must draw up action plans for protecting the human rights of mentally ill persons.

Director, NIMHANS, Bangalore, the Directors of Mental Hospitals in the Eastern Region, senior officers dealing with mental health in the State Government, officials of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, Professors of Psychiatry in the Medical Colleges of the region, State Human Right Commissions of the concerned States, Representatives of the Medical Council of India, Members of NHRC's Core Group and the Special Rapporteurs of NHRC participated in the discussions. The reports of concerned States on the NHRC's recommendations were extensively reviewed.